All these people have upgraded to both DX9.0 and Cat3.0 in the last day... why does everyone blame ATI and the Cat3.0's first... I am not saying it isn't the Cat3.0's. Just make damn sure it is before B*tching. Many other people haven't had any problems though...

Originally posted by VIVOtheFURY Ever bother to think that it might be DX9.0 and your SOUND CARD drivers aren't playing nicely together? Think DX9.0 might require new Sound card drivers as well?????

All these people have upgraded to both DX9.0 and Cat3.0 in the last day... why does everyone blame ATI and the Cat3.0's first... I am not saying it isn't the Cat3.0's. Just make damn sure it is before B*tching. Many other people haven't had any problems though...

Have some faith... the problem is there... with DX9 and Cats 2.5 the problem does not exist, it arises only after Cats 3.0 are installed. So it's not the sound card.

There IS most definetly a driver issue. I had this problem with beta dx9 and beta dx9 catalyst a week ago on my i845g/p4/r9700. Then it appeared again when i installed dx9 final + ctalyst 3.0 today on my nforce2/amd/r9700. On both systems, there was no problem with dx 8.1.

The problem appears in Q3, Alice and Serious Sam 2. To me it seems it's OpenGL related. And it's very bad, those games are totally unplayable, we're talking 2secs of hanging, then 1sec of activity, then 2secs of hanging again. In SS2 it hangs even in the menus, tho not in Q3 and Alice

Any feedback would be appreciated. I have had this problem on two completey different systems, cpu, soundcard, chipset is different. I even tried a ti4400 afterwards on the intel system, and there was no problem. So it's not dx9's fault either, ATI definetly has some explaining to do here.....

If these games us DirectSound, then it could be a DirectX issue. Even without that it could be a sound card driver issue. *shrugs*

I played a couple Quake 3 demos and a botmatch vs 4 bots (got my ass kicked) -- no stuttering at all or even a pause. Everything was perfectly smooth. A3D was disabled, but every other in-game setting was maxed out. 4x FSAA and 8x aniso. What settings are you guys using?

I hate it when people say "Works fine for me. It must be user error". At least ten users have reported the same problem. The problem does not exist with Cat 2.5+DX9, only with Cat3+DX9. There IS a driver issue.

So instead of just posting useless comments (like this one..hehe), we need to find out what the systems on which it pauses have in common, that the systems that don't have any problems with do not have (did that make any sense at all? I'm tired ).

When it not pauses, it runs smooth (I saw 300 FPS at 1024x768 4x AA). It's just that it switches into 1-fps mode every couple of seconds.

You can all see my specs in the sig. The pauses start when I install Cats3.0. If I have DX9 with Cats 2.5 no problem whatsoever and Q3 plays like a dream at 1600x1200,Full Shadows,16x aniso,2x FSAA and trilinear filtering. But when I install 3.0, then the game is unplayable. I tried erasing my q3config.cfg to get the default settings but no success. I also tried to use the OGL driver that came with Cats 2.5 (and made sure that the game used the OGL DLL i wanted by checking the driver info from within the game) but that didn't work either.

I had the exact same problem with the BRC0 version of the cats, so that could be a hint. I don't know what's broken (or more likely conflicts) with OGL performance but it is rather irrirating because it was fixed in the 2.4 version, broken in BRC0 and fixed in 2.5, only to be broken again in 3.0

Any ideas (like exact settings) from the guys that have success in this area and are experiencing no stuttering (or to be more exact, pausing) in OGL will be deeply appreciated.

Turning down sound acceleration to the bare minimum reduced the pauses for me. Only happens once or twice every minute instead of every couple of seconds, but it's still there, and it still makes the game unplayable. Also, turning off or reducing sound acceleration reduces performance and makes the sounds lag behind.

It is definetly an ATI problem, but it seems like doing things like disconnecting from the internet and disabling sound acceleration reduces the problem.

It's the same with the D3D stuttering issue, it's easy to make worse. Leave WinAmp playing while running the 3DMark High Polycount test, for example, and watch it stutter.

Congratulations ATI, now BOTH D3D and OpenGL stutters. If you keep it up at this rate, every single game will soon run at 1 FPS

__________________"Son, no one gives a **** about all the things your cell phone does. You didn't invent it, you just bought it. Anybody can do that."

You may want to try another ATI OpenGL driver. Generally, ATI's atioglxx.dll is interchangable between driver revisions. If you're having trouble with any games in particular, it is very easy to revert back to the last one that worked best for you.

Step 2: Extract atioglxx.dl_ to your Windows Desktop. There are two methods for this.

Method 1: The driver package you downloaded might be able to be opened using WinZip or WinRAR. To find out, right click on the file and see if you see a WinZip or WinRAR context menu (for WinZip, you will see Open with WinZip and for WinRAR you will see Open with WinRAR. Click the corrosponding command (if you're using WinACE, you already know wtf your doing so don't cry).

The application window will pop up listing the contents of the driver package. Search through until you find atioglxx.dl_ and highlight it, then click Extract or Extract To. The extraction window will pop up. In the right hand pane, click Desktop (it will extract the file to your Desktop -duh). Now in the left hand side of the window, uncheck use folder names (WinZip) or check Do not extract pathnames (WinRAR). Now click the OK button in WinZip or the Extract button in WinRAR. The file should appear on your desktop.

Method 2: If the driver package cannot be opened with WinZip or WinRAR (because ATI thinks they are sneaky), just double click the file so the installation procedure begins. It should prompt for an extraction location before the installation actually begins. Just click OK to this. The files will extract and when the installation comes up, just hit cancel. Open up an Explorer window (right click the My Computer icon, left click explore. Browse to C:\ATI\xxxx. Dig through these folders until you find atioglxx.dl_ and right click the file. Left click Copy in the popup menu. Now minimize or close everything you have open and Right Click on an empty secton of your Desktop (no icons). In the popup menu, click Paste. The file should appear on your desktop if you have done everything correctly.

Step 3: Expand the file to something useful.
Click Start, then left click Run. Type cmd and click OK. A Windows XP command prompt will appear (looks like MS-Dos). At this prompt, type cd desktop and hit Enter on your keyboard. Next type expand atioglxx.dl_ atioglxx.dll and hit enter. You should see a file named atioglxx.dll appear on your Desktop. Good. Now close all open windows.

Step 4: Open up another Explorer window (right click My Computer, left click Explore. In the Explorer Window that pops up, browse to C:\Windows\System32. Locate the file atioglxx.dll and rename it to atioglxx.bak. Do this by right clicking on the file and clicking Rename. You will see a blinking cursor on the icon's name. Now that we have backed up atioglxx.dll to prevent any disasters, switch back to your Desktop and right click the file atioglxx.dll. Choose copy in the popup menu. Now switch back to the Explorer window showing C:\Windows\System32\. Click Edit from up under the top meu bar, then choose Paste. Your new OpenGL driver is now in place.

Alternatively, you can right click on atioglxx.dl_ and choose Open With WinZip or Open With... and pick WinZip from the list and extract it wherever you want.